Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics is set to open its Independence outpatient clinic Oct. 22, completing a ring around the Kansas City metro area that gives patients and their families greater access to care.

The three-story, 55,000-square-foot facility at Interstate 70 and Little Blue Parkway, called Children’s Mercy East, will offer urgent-care services from noon to 10 p.m. daily. It also will provide 20 exam rooms and clinical space for patients to meet on weekdays with cardiologists, endocrinologists, and sports medicine and other pediatric specialists typically located almost 20 miles away at Children’s Mercy’s downtown location.

“Right now, we see about 23,000 patients from Eastern Jackson County; it represents 12 percent of all outpatient visits,” Children’s Mercy COO Jo Stueve said. “What it will do for those families is that instead of having to drive Downtown to see their ‘-ologist,’ they’re going to be able to see many of those physicians right there in their community.”

Stueve said the Independence location, combined with clinics in Overland Park, the Northland, Midtown Kansas City and Kansas City, Kan., gives the system a presence throughout the region. It also could draw patients from farther-out communities, such as Grain Valley or Lexington, who may not have used Children’s Mercy in the past.

“We want to have geographical access to all of the families and the children that we serve,” she said. “We are so delighted to open this facility in Eastern Jackson County. It’s something that the community has asked for for a long time, so it’s a dream come true for us to be able to provide these services in that community.”

Not including physicians, the facility will have 82 positions, of which 44 have been filled.

Independence Mayor Don Reimal said that he welcomes the opening of a second hospital in the city, which already is home to Centerpoint Medical Center, and that it will give visitors and potential business partners “confidence that we’re a city that’s on the move.”

Reimal expects that physicians eventually may begin building offices in the 90-acre Trinity Woods development around the clinic and that patient growth could require Children’s Mercy to add on to the current building.

“I really think that this will be a catalyst that moves office construction, maybe not onto the front burner but on the stove,” he said.

Ken McClain, co-chairman of the Children’s Mercy East Committee, said the clinic brings another recognized brand to Independence and will have ripple effects on economic development in the immediate neighborhood, which already includes Centerpoint, Blue Ridge Bank & Trust and Independence Center.

“I think with the high quality of the facility itself, you could see other buildings of significance wanting to locate around it,” said McClain, a lawyer with Humphrey Farrington & McClain PC.

The clinic also will have lab services and limited radiology. Stueve said the building has shelled-in space for future expansion, including a full imaging facility eventually.

Whether Children’s Mercy decides to build future clinics even farther out is “something that we’ll be looking at over time,” she said.

The roughly $20 million building was paid for with a mix of hospital money, bonds and donations from the Mader Family Foundation and the J.E. and L.E. Mabee Foundation.

HMN Architects Inc. designed the building; Turner Construction Co. was the contractor.

It’s the final piece of the first phase of Children’s Mercy’s $800 million expansion program, started in 2009, which included expansions at Children’s Mercy South, the Children’s Mercy Clinics at Broadway and the Elizabeth Ann Hall Patient Tower at the main campus.